Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues New Third Party The Common Sense Party

I would like to see a Common Sense Party. Its planks would be the kinda stuff that everybody (hopefully, pretty much) can agree on.

Speech does not equal money and money does not equal speech

Campaign funds can only be given to candidates by those persons who vote for the the candidate in question.

Infrastructure will be fixed

Congress will be paid by the hour (if they are not working, in Washington DC then they do not get paid for the time they take off to campaign) - no exceptions, no excuses.

Wars must be approved by congress within 6 months of starting. "war" will be defined as any undertaking which involves our military killing.

Corporations are not persons or people.

We need a tax system which cannot be adjusted by anybody. Taxes are for paying the bills and NOTHING ELSE. There will be no good works, social engineering, or anything else. There will also be no deductions - for anybody. All increases in income should be used to lower taxes, if not, then explanations will be tendered to the voters.

If gov wants to help poor folk they can, they cannot, however, use the tax system to do that. This would also apply to corporations. Our initial system of income taxes was, I think, 7 pages long - now its literally 10's of thousands of pages long and that is insane. In other words politicians would be denied the ability to gain votes by pandering through the tax system.

These are quickies. I suspect there is a lot of stuff, like this, which are simply not important to our existing political parties, or offend those who bribe/contribute to the politicians. Feel free to suggest more planks for the proposed party. There is only one rule, most must agree it makes sense - irregardless of political persuasion.

You started well, but then I dropped off after the "corporations are not persons or people" line.

Yeah, the crowd that was cheering in my head stopped right there, too.

If most of us want our government to fulfill a particular role, and that does not violate the Constitution, then it should fulfill that role. Even if it does violate the Constitution, we have a means to amend the Constitution if enough of us want to do that.

It may take a while to get laws changed, and even longer to get the Constitution changed, but it has worked pretty well so far compared to other systems of government.

If you want "efficient government", then we need to find a strong benevolent dictator like the Sultan of Oman to run everything.

Mitt Romney made the now infamous remark, "Corporations are people too, my friend!" in response to a constituent on the campaign trail.

And he was right. Corporations ARE people simply because people work there.

The part that burns me is the not so subtle transliteration from "corporations are people" to "a corporation is A PERSON".
The difference is huge.

I'll accept that corporations are people.
I just don't want to find myself being crushed under the weight of a herd of gigantic 600 foot tall immortal "corporate PERSONS" as they stomp around with their unlimited money and power (also known as speech these days) in search of their freedom and human rights.

My mere mortal tent is made of flesh, blood, muscle and bone.

Ni-i-i-i-ice, Jeffrey. Strong close. I think a lot of people are feeling that.

The logic behind corporations are persons is pretty simple. A group of people get together and form a corporation, they do not form corporationS. Since people are at the root then they must have created a single entity that represents them. Therefore, a corporation is a PERSON! There is a current petition being circulated (asking for signatures) which goes something like; "Natural born persons ARE persons. Corporations are not natural born, therefore they are not persons. It does, however get even better. I can remember when the Dems were doing financial reform. One of the Dem reformers actually wanted to add, to the reform, that single minor stockholders could no longer vote in corporate votes (he is no longer there. I was also told that he was actually running a stock operations whilst the 'reform' was taking place - forget his name but I think he is now a lobby guy, a rich lobby guy)

Same thing happened with the money=speech and speech=money. If free speech involves the printed word, and the tv, etc. then putting one's money where their mouth is seems just about right to the supremes. I think the problems is in the volume available to those with the big bucks. My own thought is that if one does not vote for the candidate in question then one does not have the right to support that candidate. If there was a rule that said something like; "Politics are local and locals should be the ones to support THEIR candidates". People who do not vote for a given candidate should not have the right to involve themselves in the voting process of strangers. If such a rule existed then, I suspect, it would take a lot of the stuff currently going on and which seems to offend just about everybody, irregardless of political view off the political table.

I can also remember when the Dems tried to pass a law to force them that put up political ads to also put their names on said ads - they failed. The Republicans tried to pass the same thing and they too passed. Obviously, them that didn't want their names on their product kinda bought both parties, in this instance?

Just a thought (and a bit of wishful thinking)

Thanks. You got my inner voices cheering again.

If a corporation is people, or a person, and all of the shareholders are people, wouldn't the awarding of person-rights to the corporation come at the disinfanchisement of those rights by the individual bits of the corporation?

In other words, the shareholders can either have their individual rights, or they can give up their individual rights to the corporation. Double-dippers should have an appendage cut off.

I'll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one.